Tropical house fatigue overwhelms us. Should have got our vaccinations…
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Thomas Inskeep: So now “twee trop-house” is apparently a thing.
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Hannah Jocelyn: The original is actually a refreshing take on guitar-driven tropical house, especially after “Shape Of You” earlier this week. For some reason, I was expecting the remix to be a mess, and it isn’t! It takes the ‘house’ element from the original and expands it, the post-chorus section avoiding the lack-of-explosion pop drop that never stopped annoying me the entirety of last year. It’s not exactly stunning the way last summer’s tropical remix “I Took A Pill In Ibiza” was, but if this becomes the Cheerleader of 2017, inexplicably topping the charts for weeks, it could certainly be worse.
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Alfred Soto: I hope the Trump administration cracks down on noise terrorists like this.
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Ryo Miyauchi: The remix isn’t necessarily better, just different than the original when it comes to offering help. Starley lightly taps on the shoulder to remind she’s there whenever one might need her; Ryan Riback cuts to the chase to go ahead and pull them out of their misery. Though, Riback’s dance-floor-minded take understands more of the fast life where it’s not exactly easy to make time to wind down and connect with the stillness of an acoustic guitar recording.
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Iain Mew: This seemed like an overpoweringly sugary mess, so I went back to the original to see how much of that was Ryan Riback ruining it. There was a brief moment early on when Starley’s voice sounds human that offered something different, but for the most part it turns out that the remix was just revealing the song’s true destiny. At least drowning it in candy and cream synths slightly masks the bad underlying ingredients.
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Ramzi Awn: Songs of struggle are hard to sell. Starley almost pulls it off. But somewhere in between gospel and pitch-shifting, “Call on Me” loses its focus and winds up in the 90s.
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Peter Ryan: It’s a dancefloor-destined aural hug dressed up in Ribeck’s crisp competence — his remix preserves the original’s sense of space, wisely doesn’t dial the tempo up too much, stays focused on furnishing a vehicle to get Starley to the club, where her lyric takes on a new poignance. She’s skirting both naiveté and pessimism; “if this is fate then we’ll find a way to cheat” is a staggeringly perfect sentiment for the moment, laden with exhaustion and resolve and resourcefulness. She validates the sad, knows that help isn’t on the way, but doesn’t diminish the power of small comforts.
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Katherine St Asaph: The original was tropical house cliche, but with a certain sweetness and lightness of touch. This is tropical house cliche, overproduced to claustrophobia.
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Micha Cavaseno: When Even Autotune Can’t Cover Up A Bad Vocal: A Presentation by Ryan Riback
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